“The Book Censor’s Library” by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain / TOI Bookmark podcast
Bothayna Al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library was published in 2024 by Restless Books. It is described a perilous and fantastical satire of banned books, secret archives, and the looming eye of an all-powerful government. In a near future where most literature is deemed dangerous by the state, a bureaucrat falls head over heels for the novel he’s supposed to ban. That leads to another book, and then another… soon he’s drawn into an underground movement of illegal readers laboring to save the stories they love. As the stakes go up, he must weigh his mission against the terrible risk posed to his family – particularly his young daughter, whose affinity for make-believe is already rousing suspicion.
This dark adventure is timely to the point of urgency, written in defiance of strict censorship laws in Al-Essa’s home country of Kuwait. It arrives in the U.S. amid a rising tide of restrictive legislation that targets schools, libraries, and marginalized writers. I’m thrilled to share this magical and important story.
Bothayna Al-Essa is the bestselling Kuwaiti author of nearly a dozen novels and additional children’s books. She is also the founder of Takween, a bookshop and publisher of critically acclaimed works. Her most recent book, The Book Censor’s Library, won the Sharjah Award for Creativity in the novel category in 2021 and is her third novel to appear in English, after Lost in Mecca and All That I Want to Forget. It was on the Time magazine’s 100 Best Books of 2024. The Book Censor’s Library was translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain. It was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction in their category for translated literature.
El Essa is a member of the Kuwaiti Writers Association as well as the Arab Internet Writers Union. She campaigned against censorship in Kuwait until it was abolished in 2020.
Al-Essa was author-in-residence at the British Centre for Literary Translation for the summer of 2023, and the recipient of Kuwait’s Nation Encouragement Award for her fiction in 2003 and 2012. She has written books on writing and led writing workshops throughout the Arab world.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Bothayna for TOI Bookmark podcast. Here is a snippet from the conversation:
Well, I guess that was the whole idea of writing that book. The defining line between reality and imagination is also imaginary. Everything is blended together. I think the more we deny the reality of imagination… if we deny it, it will haunt us in ways that never occurred to us, in ways that are unexpected.
Listen to it on Spotify:
TOI Bookmark is a weekly podcast on literature and publishing. TOI is an acronym for the Times of India (TOI) which is the world’s largest newspaper and India’s No. 1 digital news platform with over 3 billion page views per month. The TOI website is one of the most visited news sites in the world with 200 million unique monthly visitors and about 1.6 billion monthly page views. TOI is the world’s largest English newspaper with a daily circulation of more than 4 million copies, across many editions, and is read daily by approximately 13.5 million readers. The podcasts are promoted across all TOI platforms. I have recorded more than 130+ sessions with Jnanpith, Padma Bhushan, and Padma Shree awardees, International Booker Prize winners, Booker Prize winners, Women’s Prize for Fiction, Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize, Stella Prize, AutHer Awards, Erasmus Prize, BAFTA winners etc. Sometimes the podcast interviews are carried across all editions of the print paper with a QR code embedded in it.
Some of the authors who have been interviewed are: Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bashti, Samantha Harvey, Jenny Erpenbeck, Michael Hoffman, Paul Murray, V. V. Ganeshananthan, Hisham Matar, Anita Desai, Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzro, Venki Ramakishnan, Siddhartha Deb, Elaine Feeney, Manjula Padmanabhan, NYRB Classics editor and founder Edwin Frank, Jonathan Escoffery, Joya Chatterji, Arati Kumar-Rao, Paul Lynch, Dr Kathryn Mannix, David Nicholls, Cat Bohannon, Charlotte Wood, Sebastian Barry, Shabnam Minwalla, Paul Harding, Ayobami Adebayo, Pradeep Sebastian, G N Devy, Angela Saini, Manav Kaul, Amitav Ghosh, Damodar Mauzo, Boria Majumdar, Geetanjali Mishra, William Dalrymple, David Walliams, and Annie Ernaux.
21 May 2025
Notes:
- Read an essay by Sawad Hussain. “Not all literary translators are created equal” Wasafiri, 29 May 2025
